Page 3

CHAPTER THREE

The space was exactly as she remembered it from yesterday’s tour. Too clean. Monotone. Designed for people who made clean breaks.

There were two chairs, and she carefully, deliberately chose the one facing the console. The one that let her back face the door. If she had to look at Nashir Rahim while she tried to function, she wouldn’t.

She placed her bag beside her chair, smoothed the front of her jacket, and sat. Her fingers trembled once on the edge of the keyboard. She pressed them flat to the desk. This wasn’t a crush. It was a problem. An unanticipated variable she hadn’t accounted for.

The trail looped behind the OrdoTech compound, carved into a dry ridge lined with half-dead pine, scrub grass, and the occasional security drone disguised as a wildlife camera. The air was cool, thinner than Phoenix, and carried the sharp edge of high-altitude stillness.

She hadn’t meant to be on the trail that early. But the sterile luxury of her suite at the hotel had offered no comfort for her restless mind and the intrusive flashes of the man she’d collided with that morning. Sleek floors. Polished chrome. White noise vents disguised as air purifiers. The kind of place meant to feel expensive without actually feeling human.

Sleep had been a suggestion, not a reality. Again.

The night had been half-code, half-coffee, and a full-body reminder that she was better with patterns than people. Better with systems than silence. The room had been too quiet, but not the comforting kind, more like waiting-room silence. Like bad news was coming and hadn’t knocked yet.

She’d paced for two hours. Checked her firewall redundancies twice. Reviewed the initial audit files. The code was clean, but the procurement trail wasn’t. Not exactly. Not obviously. Just enough to itch.

The run helped for a while, until the path curved and the mountain hit her. Literally.

The impact reverberated, even when she took her clothes off back at the hotel, even when she got under the spray. The scent of him, warm cedar, spice, sun-drenched muscle memory still lingered at the edge of her senses. Like she’d inhaled him too deep and couldn’t quite exhale.

She scrubbed harder than she needed to. Pulled her hair back tighter than usual because recklessness would get her into too much trouble. Buttoned her blouse all the way up, like containment could be stitched in cotton. She didn’t pick the black pumps. Too loud on tile. She chose flats. Gray. Silent. The kind worn by women who disappeared easily into background noise.

She told herself the run was about oxygen. Alignment. Not being the first analyst to break on day one.

His file suggested that Nash Rahim may be difficult. Possibly charming. Definitely intense.

She hadn’t expected him to rearrange something inside her.

He was rattling her nervous system like an unanticipated earthquake. Shaking the pillars she lived by. One collision. One arm around her. One scent that wouldn’t leave her skin. Suddenly, her bubble didn’t feel reinforced anymore. It felt fragile. Hairline fractures under pressure.

She curled her fingers tighter against the desk. She would not break. Not here. Not in front of him.

Mistakes were the enemy. That’s how she’d survived being buried, by being useful. Controlled. Invisible. But now she was vibrating with the weight of what she hadn’t been ready for. Then she felt it. A shift in the air. A ripple in the silence. The door opened behind her. She didn’t have to look. She knew it was him.

She hadn’t expected him. Not like that. Not at a dead sprint. Not on top of her.

But the second his arm wrapped around her to break the fall, her body knew.

The weight. The reflex. The shield.

She didn’t say his name. Didn’t even let her eyes widen. She just cataloged the details while he tried to play off the impact, breathing like a freight train and still somehow steadying her like she was the fragile one.

Classic operator conditioning. Entirely unnecessary. She was fine. More than fine, if she was being honest, if her pulse had anything to say about it. Not that she’d admit it.

Not when he looked at her like that. Like he was trying to fit her into a box he didn’t even realize was two sizes too small. Like he didn’t know she already knew more about him than he wanted anyone to. She did. Of course she did. She’d read his file three times.

Then she’d closed it because the file didn’t explain the spaces. The parts that didn’t track. The pieces that had been redacted or rewritten so many times, they no longer resembled truth.

That was why she was here.

But she hadn’t expected him to look like that. The picture with the file had him in tactical gear, and it didn’t do him justice.

Now they had to work together.

Perfect.

Uneasiness slid over her. She’d thought it would be awkward. She hadn’t counted on it being this intimate, this fast. Not the way his hand had pressed to her back when they fell. Not the way he’d looked at her after, like she’d just made a fissure in his armor, and he wasn’t sure if it was lethal. Had he been testing the edges of her bubble, her barrier, the one she’d erected after…everything, so that everything wouldn’t destroy her?

She should’ve said something. Should’ve acknowledged him.

Instead, she let him go. Let him walk away with that same alpha-stalking grace all warriors carried before they remembered how to be civilians.

Now she was sitting in a sterile glass box at OrdoTech, trying not to think about the fact that he had been a face in a file, and when she finally did meet him, it was upside down with pine needles in her hair.

She folded her arms as footsteps echoed in the hallway. No one had warned her that he’d gotten stronger than the man in the SEAL report. Quieter than the photo suggested. Heavier in ways a file could never capture. Caspari hadn’t said, By the way, Nash? He survived what killed the others. He looks like he carries every one of them on his back.

She just had to get to her station. Get back to the code. Get her breathing under control before he?—

Then the door opened.

Nash Rahim didn’t just walk in. He entered, like gravity arriving late to the equation, tension bleeding off him like steam, moving with a stillness born from noise, the kind that only came after chaos, after everything inside had already shattered. His eyes scanned corners, vents, surveillance domes. Not paranoid. Pattern-trained. Like a man who’d entered too many rooms that hadn’t let him leave again.

Her breath caught, not for the body, though God, the body was a structural masterpiece, but for the absence of everything he used to be.

He was built differently than in the photos. Leaner. Sharper. All edges and silence. Then his gaze found hers and stuck. Just a fraction too long. Not unprofessional. Calculated. She could totally understand that. Like he’d filed her under “unresolved variable” and was already running the math.

“Grace Harlan,” she said, steady.

He was just a man. A mountain of a man with battlefield eyes, scars behind his restraint, and a body built like a weapon, but still, just a man.

So why couldn’t she stop shaking?

His brow didn’t twitch. But his voice, when it came, was lower than it had been on the trail. Almost cautious. He closed the door behind him.

“You look pretty good for a woman who got hit by a mountain only this morning.”

His face hadn’t changed much, but it had . Sharper now. More defined. High cheekbones, square jaw, a close-trimmed beard that shaded his mouth like an unfinished secret. His eyes, deep, dark, unflinching, held a kind of black fire that scorched.

She’d read the file. Memorized it. But nothing had prepared her for this, for him . That body was still all precision. Corded muscle. Long lines. Built not for show, but for the kind of work that left scars.

Something warm pierced her poor, beleaguered bubble.

Charming.

“So you’re the code whisperer.”

She ignored the bait. “You’re the hammer Ma’am sent to walk soft and hit hard.”

He didn’t smile. But something near his mouth twitched just once. “Ma’am?”

“She wouldn’t give me her name. She was demanding and unapologetic about it.”

“Director Lynne?—”

“Caspari. I know. I found out who she was ten minutes after I got home.”

“Don’t tell me. Snatched you off the street, hooded, no explanation. Fucking CIA.” His voice was deeper as if he was annoyed they’d treated her like that.

“You, too?”

He huffed out a laugh. “They tried.”

The confident sound of his voice was like a needle prick in that bubble that had been shaken when he’d plowed into her.

“Let me guess. You kicked their asses with one hand tied behind your back, then told her to get the fuck off your property.”

Before he could answer, the door behind him opened with a soft pneumatic sigh, and in stepped their new escort, a man in a slate-gray blazer that screamed “mid-tier clearance and inflated self-importance.”

“Mr. Rahim. Ms. Harlan.” The man offered a strained smile, carrying a tablet. “Rory Kendall. External Compliance.”

Grace didn’t slow. “We’ll need full access.”

Rory exhaled with barely suppressed disgust. “You’ll get read-only. Eighteen months of vendor logs and archive summaries. Standard scope for outside auditors.”

“That’s not going to work,” she said coolly. Exactly the kind of data that got scrubbed first when someone had something to hide. They were giving her a glass wall to press her nose against and betting she was too dumb, too green, or too bogged down in bureaucratic gobbledygook to notice.

She and Nash had the power.

She gave him her sharpest smile. “Again, there must be some mistake. We’re here for real data, not some mirror system.” Then she dropped her bomb. “You can take me to your air-gapped annex,” she said, voice neutral. Any company that wanted to protect their data kept one terminal air-gapped with no internet connection. No external access. An island inside the system where the real secrets lived. Hack-proof. This was why they had to get physically inside OrdoTech.

“Direct access to our primary data is excessive,” he said, eyes narrowed.

“Your noncompliant behavior to our requests is excessive, Rory,” Nash said, lifting a brow. “We’re busy, busy people, and this bullshit is wasting our time.” He stepped closer and Rory backed up. Grace didn’t blame him. Nash was living up to not only direct action, but violence of action. The man commanded the room already, now he was issuing orders.

The response came through gritted teeth. "I'll have to check---"

“You don’t have to check shit, my friend.” Nash gave him a lethal smile, a wall of kinetic threat. “You’ll get that access for us before we reach the door. Right?” Nash clapped him on the shoulder and Rory flinched from Nash’s grip.

Rory went still, something just below his veneer radiating something malevolent. "Of course. Let me show you to the annex."

“Not necessary,” Nash said, not waiting for permission. He moved like he owned the floor, and Grace followed because, God help her, she trusted him to clear the way. “Room number?”

Rory looked like he wasn’t going to answer for a moment until Nash looked at him. The air dropped another ten degrees. “Two floors up, Room 405.”

As they moved, Nash fell into step beside her. He didn’t say anything until they were alone in the elevator, steel walls reflecting the flicker of overhead fluorescents.

“They think they can fuck us over and keep us in sandbox mode?”

Grace kept her eyes forward. The man was irritated, not used to being challenged. Sandbox mode was code for blocking their access. "Doing CQC all on your own?" SEALs were experts at Close Quarters Combat. After watching Nash work a room like it owed him something, she saw why. Operators were trained to overwhelm threats without ever drawing a weapon. Could the man be any sexier ?

“I ain’t alone, hebbiti . I’ve got my own direct-action partner who’s too savvy to get caught in the crossfire,” he growled. She could feel the shift beside her. The click of something coiled that was relaxing just enough to let her in.

Not trust. Not yet.

But maybe respect.

“Someone’s nervous,” she said, and he nodded.

The door dinged. They stepped into a lower corridor, this one colder, air processed too many times to feel like anything but manufactured.

The lab setup was functional. Twin monitors. Secured keyboard. Dual login. External hardware docked but unplugged.

Grace sat.

Nash leaned against the wall, arms crossed. He wasn’t crowding her. But he wasn’t retreating either.

She tapped in.

Systems booted. Access credentials populated. Firewalls flexed.

She was the sharp one. The capable one. Quiet, efficient, invisible. That was how she stayed safe. That was how she stayed viable. Stay in the lines, don’t ask for too much, and don’t ever, ever let them see you tremble.

He shifted and she snapped. “Could you sit?”

He unspooled that flexible, very male body, and she heard a chair creak as he slid into it. She typed and watched the screen. Then she frowned. This wasn’t right. Had she typed in something wrong? She went back to her code and gasped. She had. She gritted her teeth. Stop getting distracted, she told herself. She worked at resurrecting her bubble, it would have worked and she was almost there. But she hadn’t expected his scent, and her fortification crumpled.

She sat at the console, trying to focus on the task at hand. The room was quiet, save for the soft hum of the air conditioner. Yet, her concentration was slipping away, drawn irresistibly to Nash's presence. He was standing again. She didn’t know how she knew, she just did. He had to move, it seemed, and every time he did, just a few feet away, his scent intoxicated her.

He smelled like the desert after rain. Like cedarwood and spice, oud and something sun-warmed, resinous and ancient. There was the faint bite of pepper, the whisper of crushed cardamom pods, and a sweetness that curled behind it like smoke drifting through an old souk.

She took a deep breath, trying to steady herself, but the scent was too powerful. It was sexy, confident, and undeniably Nash.

Grace knew she was lost, unable to escape the allure of his presence. She realized she hadn’t typed a single thing for a full minute. Her bubble was terribly compromised, and panic set in.

How was she supposed to do this with him in the room? He was supposed to be her partner in this, and he would be a valuable one. Everything was there on paper, but reality, oh God, he was a codebreaker, her codebreaker, bubble popper. He moved, his clothes rustling. It should be against the law for him to wear a leather jacket. It just should. The scent of it mixed into the heady effect of him, and the movement of fabric only reminded her what was beneath those clothes, which in turn made her remember all that hard, protective muscle surrounding her.

She tried to focus on the screen, made two more mistakes, and trembled with the annoyance of it. She corrected the errors, then waited. Nothing happened. What? She should be getting an answer to her query.

Sloppy. She didn’t make mistakes. Not twice in one sitting. She was the analyst who never broke, until she broke once and lost everything. This wasn’t about attraction. It was about control, and she was losing it.

Grace's heart pounded in her chest as she tried to maintain her focus. It wasn’t a scent she’d ever forget. Not after this morning. Not after the way it had seeped into her skin during impact and refused to let go.

The room seemed to close in around her, every sound amplified, every movement magnified. Nash's presence was overwhelming, and she was acutely aware of every breath he took. Each inhale and exhale were a symphony of sensation, a reminder of his proximity and the undeniable attraction she felt.

She had already made several errors, her composure collapsing under the pressure. The panic of trying to keep her focus was palpable, and every time Nash moved, the rustle of his clothes changed the air. Shifted like the world had realigned. Her bubble crumpled, quiet and pathetic, under the weight of that presence.

The environment seemed to conspire against her. The soft hum of the air conditioner, his overpowering essence, just…him. All of it combined to create a sensory overload. Grace's emotions were a whirlwind, a mix of curiosity, frustration, and the desperate need to maintain control. Her thoughts scattered like dropped pins. No order. No logic. Just heat and breath and the memory of being caught like she was something breakable, which she hated. Which she wanted again. God help her, she wanted it.

The room seemed to fade away, leaving only the two of them, caught in a dance of attraction and tension. Grace's control slipped further with each passing second, and she was powerless to stop it.

The console beeped and she looked at the screen. This wasn’t what she’d asked for. This was food prep logs from the cooks in the cafeteria.

“How’s it going?” His voice was gentle, just as distracting as he was. She flinched anyway. This was the part where someone noticed the fractures. Where they saw the brilliant analyst glitch. Where they realized she was more scar than code. If he saw that, he might ask too many questions.

She couldn’t break down again. Not here. Not in front of him. Not when the only thing that had kept her standing was being the girl who didn’t get rattled. The girl who was useful. If she wasn’t useful, she wasn’t anything.

Grace stared at the monitor like it had betrayed her. She was a cyber specialist. A systems genius. That wasn’t arrogance. It was fact. She saw patterns where others saw noise, anticipated code behaviors before the compiler finished its loop.

This was something else.

She’d been locked in a silent battle of wills with a system that shouldn’t have had one. Queries rejected without reason. Access rerouted through dead channels. Fragments of logs appearing and vanishing like ghosts.

She typed faster. Refined. Adjusted. Nothing. It was as if the code had a pulse.As if it were choosing not to answer her. Which was impossible. Code wasn’t sentient. Unless…

No.

Her stomach twisted. Her fingers hovered above the keys. She was flushed, aching, her head still active from Nash’s proximity, the way he filled space without even trying. He hadn’t said a word since their earlier exchange, just watched her work like she was some kind of miracle and not the glitching mess she was rapidly becoming.

She couldn’t take it anymore. “Leave,” she said quietly, not looking up.

He didn’t move. “What?”

“Just go,” she said, sharper now. “There’s nothing else for you to do here.”

A pause. Then, gently, “Grace… what’s wrong?”

She shook her head. She couldn’t break down again. Not here. Not in front of him. Not when the only thing that had kept her standing was her unyielding competence.

It was all too much. The glitching system. The unfinished code. The ache in her spine from sitting too long in too much silence while he was too close. The scent of him still in the air, the warm leather and cedar making her pulse jump.

He waited a beat longer. Then left, the door clicking softly behind him.

She retreated into systems. Always had. Code was clean. Code didn’t need her to be charming or desirable or whole. It just needed precision. But her precision was bleeding out, error by error, distraction by distraction, and that terrified her more than anything.

She caught her ride alone. Didn’t speak. Didn’t look at the driver. Just stared out the window as the city lights blurred past, the world too loud, her thoughts too sharp.

By the time she reached the hotel, she was trembling. Her throat burned. Her fingers curled tightly around the keycard like it could anchor her.

Inside, she stripped off her clothes and walked straight into the shower. She turned the water up, scalding and scrubbed hard, dragging soap down her arms, across her chest, behind her neck. It didn’t help. She could still smell him. She pressed her forehead to the tile and exhaled a broken breath.

I can’t do this.

She wrapped a towel around herself and stepped out, steam curling behind her like the ghost of her former control. She collapsed against the wall and slid to the floor, knees up, arms wrapped around her shins.

Her bubble had failed.

Nash Rahim had broken through it with a single look, a single scent, a single fucking collision. She couldn’t get it back. Not the stillness. Not the clarity.

Her chest heaved with something primal and suffocating, fear. This is what happens when I get close. This is what happens when I think I can be seen and still survive.

She rose on shaking legs. Dried off. Threw on jeans and a long-sleeve tee without even looking in the mirror. No moisturizer. No toner. No symmetry. No breath.

She yanked her suitcase out of the closet and began shoving clothes inside. No folding. No order. Just flight. Escape. Retreat. Back to exile. Back to silence. Back to where no one could see the seams where she still hadn’t healed.

A knock. Her spine snapped straight. She froze. Not the door to the hallway. The connecting door. She didn’t answer. Another knock.

“Grace?”

His voice. Rougher now. Tired. Soft.

She crossed the room with hesitant steps. Opened the door.

Nash stood there, hair so damn dark, shirt molding to his chest, that kinetic, predatory energy still coiled tight beneath his surface. He looked past her.

Saw the suitcase on the bed.

“You’re leaving?” His brow furrowed. “You’re serious?”

She nodded. Couldn’t speak. He was too close. The air filled with him again. Leather, spice, heat. Her bubble shuddered again. This time with a soundless scream inside her.

“You can do this job, Grace.” His voice was rough. Fierce. “I’ve seen your brain at work. You’ve got the skill.”

She flinched. There it was. The test. The assumption that it was about competence. That she was snapping because she wasn’t good enough.

She bristled. “This assignment isn’t the problem.”

He didn’t back down. “Then what is?” His jaw flexed. “What does Caspari have on you?”

Her mouth opened. Closed. A bitter laugh caught in her throat.

“She’s been watching me,” she whispered. “Found out I’ve been running silent queries into the drone breach that tanked my career.” His expression darkened. “She threatened to report me. Said if I didn’t take this op, she’d expose me. No one believed me.” Her voice trembling, she didn’t stop. “I got overridden that day. People died. Now I’m supposed to forget? Pretend the system wasn’t hacked? That my gut didn’t scream before everything went to hell? I tried to move on. I really did.” Her shoulders slumped. Her hands curled at her sides. “But I can’t.”

Nash’s face changed. The air shifted. His gaze dropped, shadowed and haunted. He blinked once. Twice. His next breath shook. “You don’t move on,” he said quietly, “when the people you took oaths with get left behind.” His fists clenched at his sides. “We both know what’s at stake here, federal charges…too many questions…pain, but…you don’t move on, Grace… we don’t move on, unless we follow this train to the end of the line.” Nash’s fists clenched at his sides. The vein in his throat throbbed like a heartbeat trying to punch through the skin. "We’ll carry it. Every damn day."

He hesitated, then added, almost grudgingly, "I caught something, too," he said roughly.

"Doesn’t make sense, but now we’re shoved into the same corner. That bitch connected dots and we have one shot to make it right." He stepped closer, his body heat overtaking hers, and now the room was too full. Too intimate. Why did he smell so damn good?

A grim smile tugged at his mouth, bitter and broken. "You’re not crazy," he said, voice low. "Whatever you flagged, whatever you saw. It wasn’t nothing." His pain pressed into hers, warping the air between them. Her breath stuttered. The ache behind her ribs started to pulse.

He pressed his palm to the doorframe, towering above her but not threatening. Just there . Heavy with sorrow and strength.

“I understand the threat of losing everything,” he said softly. “I know how that feels.” His voice dropped lower. “But I can’t do this without you. If you leave now, if we don’t finish this… we’ll regret it for the rest of our lives.” Her eyes stung. “That bitch coerced us,” he continued, “but this…we get to choose what this becomes. We can choose to find the truth. Not for them. For us.” He swallowed hard, voice fracturing. “You remember every second of what happened to you, and I… I can’t remember a single one. Not how my brothers died. Not what I did, not what I didn’t do. Not what I said to them. Nothing.”

His voice was rough. “I need answers, Grace. I need you.”

The words hit harder than they should have.

For the first time in longer than she could admit, someone needed her. Not her skills. Not her silence. Her .

It terrified her.

If she could have stayed behind her walls, tucked safe inside the bubble she had built out of loss and discipline, maybe she could have survived this. But Nash kept pushing past every barrier. Colliding against her mind. Her body. Her pulse. Tearing holes in the places she thought were impenetrable.

He was becoming something to her. She didn’t even have a name for it yet.

She didn’t know how to survive wanting it.

Or him.

She backed up, eyes wide, heartbeat hammering in her chest.

“I can’t,” she whispered. It came out broken. Too honest. Her control finally failing.

He stilled. The pain in his face, visible now, raw and devastating, clenched every muscle in his jaw. “I’ll talk to Caspari,” he said, stepping forward. “I’ll get her to back off. Just… please, Grace.”

Her chest seized. Her lungs burned. It wasn’t the threat. It wasn’t the case. She hadn’t cried in a year. But now her eyes stung. Why now? Why him?

He reacted to the look on her face. That’s what happened when her bubble burst, she couldn’t hide a damn thing. His voice thick, he asked, “What is it?”

He crossed the threshold. He stepped into her room. Into her.

Now that he was close, too close, his scent was more powerful than ever, wrapping around her like silk slipping down bare skin. It was heat and hunger, leather and spice, a dark musk touched with smoke and something elemental, like cedar smoldering under sunlight, oud steeped in want.

It wasn’t cologne. It was him. The scent of sweat and skin and restrained power. The memory of his body protecting her. The phantom echo of muscle and breath and need.

Her knees softened. Her breath hitched. That ache bloomed again, low and deep, hot as want, sharp as fear. She wanted to lean in.To sink. To give in to the pull of him, let that scent drag her under until she forgot how to breathe without it.

It made her feel alive.

God help her, it made her wet .

The shock of it, of how much she wanted him, of how fast she was unraveling, was more than she could bear.

Not now. Not when she’d finally learned how to survive without wanting anything at all.

Her bubble wasn’t just gone. He was inside it.

Her chest squeezed, breath fluttering. “It’s you,” she said, so quiet it barely touched the air, like the words themselves were afraid to exist.